Usability Tests

There are many different types of interviews that you can perform to get customer feedback. 

These include one-on-one interviews, focus groups, and even usability tests.

Usability testing is when you meet with your customers and watch them interact with your product as they complete set tasks.

They are extremely beneficial for understanding whether your customers are able to navigate through your product to accomplish key tasks and their overall experience.

Here are some things to keep in mind when performing usability tests:

Filter your customers and users

A usability test with 5 users can uncover 85% of issues. 

You do not have to perform usability tests with every single customer, identify the ones that you would like to test your product and put a plan in place.

How many customers do you want to perform tests, how long will the tests be, and what exactly will they test? Also ensure that the customers chosen are your target customers.

Prepare in advance

As the saying goes: “Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance.”

Customers give up their free time to assist your business with valuable feedback. So show them some respect by valuing their time and effort. 

From the moment they meet someone at the front desk of your office, who will you introduce them to, where will they go, and what will you tell them. And if the session takes longer than planned then let them know and ask for their permission to continue.

Offer a reward

While it is nice to have customers that are willing to assist you with testing your product for free, if you can offer them some sort of reward for their assistance then do so.

They will appreciate it.

Ask users to share their thoughts audibly while completing tasks

This tactic will let you know how your customers are feeling as they complete their given tasks with your product and provide you with the feedback that you need for improvements that need to be made. 

Utilize open-ended and closed-ended tasks during usability testing.

Open-ended questions enable customers to provide a free form answer, there is no limited range related to the answer that they can give. For task scenarios they also determine how the testing participant will choose to accomplish the task.

Close-ended questions on the other hand have a defined range of questions that users can choose from, the answer options are limited. For task scenarios they determine whether the testing participant is able to accomplish the task or not.

Some questions to ask testing participants to answer as they test your product to understand their thoughts include

• What do you think of ____?

• I noticed that you ____, please tell me why

• What were you expecting when you ____?

• How did ____ make you feel?

• What did you think of the navigation?

• What did you think of the on screen prompts?

• Did you find ____ easy or difficult?

When performing usability tests here are some things to watch out for:

• Testing your product too late - test early to receive feedback that can be actioned upon

• Failing to screen testing participants - testing with the wrong people will lead to poor results

• Asking leading questions - these are questions that point participants towards a particular answer. Keep questions open-ended and allow participants to answer on their own

• Interrupting participants as they are testing your product - give participants the chance to get used to your product and figure out how to complete their given tasks

Check out the airfocus glossary to learn more about this topic.

Document the feedback from your usability tests

After your usability tests are complete, document the feedback you received from your customers and put a plan in place on next steps. 

With airfocus you can link feedback to ideas and opportunities gathered from your usability tests and close the loop by updating your customers on the status of features as they are being actioned upon.